John Cassidy's Blog, page 14

How Long Will the Trump Bull Market Last?

Thursday marks eight years since the low point of the last bear market on Wall Street. On March 9, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 6,547.05. Since then, it has more than tripled. If you’d invested twenty thousand dollars in the Dow index eight years ago, it would now be worth about sixty-four thousand dollars.

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Related:
Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and the Misuse of American History
Trump’s Presidency Is Ruining My Personal Brand
Latinos Feel the Sting of Trump’s Presidency

The House G.O.P. Health-Care Plan Is Harmful, Regressive, and Wrong

There are at least two ways to look at the American Health Care Act, the Obamacare-replacement proposal that House Republicans released on Monday. Looked at up close, it perhaps isn’t quite as extreme, in some respects, as previous G.O.P. proposals. But if you step back and consider what enacting this bill would mean for the health-care system as a whole, and for American society as a whole, it is far from moderate and reasonable.

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Related:
When Trump’s New Travel Ban Goes Into Effect, Watch the Border Agents
Five Questions About the Latest WikiLeaks Release
Who Is Loving “The Americans”?

Why Trump’s Latest Obama Accusation Could Backfire

This weekend, President Trump was mostly up to his usual stuff, popping off on social media, peddling unfounded conspiracy theories to divert attention from stories he doesn’t like, and generally acting in an alarming, obnoxious manner. But this particular “Trump rants and rages” story might have lasting significance. According to numerous reports, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has asked the Justice Department to knock down Trump’s new claim that former President Obama ordered Trump’s phones to be wiretapped. Even for Trump, who has been busy rewriting the Presidential etiquette book since the day he was inaugurated, being labelled a liar by a major federal agency would be a first.

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Related:
Trump’s Divisive New Travel Ban
The End of the Idea of North America
Your Questions About “Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War,” Answered

Sessions Revelations Leave Donald Trump in Another Fine Russian Mess

With President Trump being uncharacteristically quiet on Thursday morning amid a new batch of reports about his associates’ ties to Russia, it was left to the Kremlin to blast the “fake news” media. “The only piece of advice that I can give is that, in a situation like this, avoid reacting to all such anonymous, baseless fake news stories and rely only on official statements by genuine officials,” Dmitri Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said, in Moscow.

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Related:
Alaska’s Pebble Mine and the Legend of Trump’s Gold
Putin Demands Sessions Resign from Russian Government
After Sessions: Where the Russia Investigation Goes Now

Don’t Be Fooled. Donald Trump Didn’t Pivot

The instant reviews of President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday night are in, and some of them are raves. Trump had scarcely left the House chamber when Fox News’s Chris Wallace credited him with reinventing the art of giving speeches to joint sessions of Congress. “I feel like, tonight, Donald Trump became the President of the United States,” Wallace opined. His colleague Dana Perino didn’t go quite that far, but she did rate the performance “the best speech he”—Trump—“has ever given.”

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Related:
Trump’s Speech to Congress Was Not “Normal”
A Vichy Scholar Held in Houston
Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, March 1st

The Kansas Shootings and Trump’s America

Srinivas Kuchibhotla was mourned and cremated in his home town, Hyderabad, India, on Tuesday, six days after a white U.S. Army veteran—who reportedly shouted, “Get out of my country!”—shot him dead in a bar-restaurant in Olathe, Kansas. Kuchibhotla, who was thirty-two years old and a computer engineer, had lived in the United States for more than a decade and had a master’s degree from the University of Texas at El Paso.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Seven Things to Watch For in Trump’s Joint Address to Congress
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, February 28th
Donald Trump Learns That Reforming Health Care Is “Complicated”

The Shameful Republican Assault on Medicaid

Speechless: The Trump Effect

Donald Trump’s Alternative-Reality Press Conference

It was “insane,” a “marathon rant” at the media, and “a press conference for the ages.” Before you accuse me of liberal bias, these were the terms that Fox Business Channel’s Charles Gasparino, the home page of the New York Post, and Fox News’s Shepard Smith used, respectively, to describe the performance that Donald Trump put on during a lengthy press conference in the East Room of the White House on Thursday.

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Related:
Trying (and Failing) Not to Fear So Much About Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Art of Avoidance
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, February 16th

Donald Trump Versus the World

Just when you think things can’t get crazier in the new Trump Administration, they do. On Wednesday, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a White House press conference, Donald Trump blamed the press, the intelligence agencies, and Hillary Clinton for the ouster of Michael Flynn, his former national-security adviser.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Joys of Golf, No Matter the Weather or the President
How Elizabeth Warren Found a Villain in Andy Puzder
The Rejection of Andy Puzder

It’s Time for a Proper Investigation of Trump’s Russia Ties

With Washington still agog at the news that Michael Flynn was forced to resign his post as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, following revelations about his contacts with Russian officials, the Times, on Tuesday night, dropped another shocker on the capital. Citing four current and former American officials as their sources, the paper’s Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzo wrote, “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Mistake the Berkeley Protesters Made about Milo Yiannopoulos
Classic Rom-Coms Rewritten for Trump’s America
The Questionable Account of What Michael Flynn Told the White House